Meta Muse Surpasses 10M Users as Shopping and Productivity Drive Growth

TL;DR

• Meta revealed during its Q3 2026 earnings call that its standalone Muse AI app has crossed 10 million users, marking its fastest-growing consumer AI product to date.
• Shopping has unexpectedly emerged as a top use case alongside personal productivity, with users turning to Muse for product discovery, price comparisons, and personalized recommendations.
• The milestone sharpens Meta's AI strategy around commerce and assistants, intensifying competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.

A Breakout Moment for Muse

Meta has a new AI hit on its hands. During its third-quarter earnings call this week, the company announced that Muse, its standalone AI app, has surpassed 10 million users.

The figure may be modest compared to Meta AI's nearly one billion monthly users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, but executives framed it as a critical proof point: users are willing to download and return to a dedicated Meta AI experience outside its social apps.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg described Muse's early traction as exceeding internal expectations, noting strong retention and engagement driven by voice, multimodal queries, and personalization features built on Meta's Llama models.

Shopping Emerges as a Surprise Powerhouse

The biggest surprise from the earnings disclosure wasn't just the user number — it was how people are using Muse.

Alongside personal productivity tasks like writing, summarizing, planning, and coding help, shopping has emerged as one of the top activities on the app. Meta said users are increasingly asking Muse to find deals, compare products, build gift guides, and surface ideas from across the web and Instagram sellers.

The trend aligns with Meta's broader push into AI-powered commerce. The company has been testing shoppable responses, visual search with real-time pricing, and integrations with Shopify and other merchants that let users go from inspiration to checkout without leaving the chat.

For Meta, which generates nearly all of its revenue from advertising, an AI assistant that influences purchase decisions could open a lucrative new layer of intent-driven ads and sponsored recommendations.

Productivity Still Leads the Way

Despite the shopping buzz, personal productivity remains Muse's core engine for growth. Meta highlighted daily use cases like meeting prep, email drafting, study help, travel itineraries, and image generation and editing.

New features rolled out in Q3, including longer context memory, cross-device continuity with Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and deeper integration with calendars and messaging, have helped position Muse as more of a personal chief of staff than a simple chatbot.

Analysts say that positioning is key to keeping users from defaulting to rival assistants already embedded in work tools and operating systems.

What 10 Million Users Means for Meta's AI Strategy

Crossing 10 million users gives Meta much-needed momentum for its standalone AI strategy. Until this year, Meta AI was primarily a feature inside other apps, not a destination in itself.

Muse changes that calculus. It gives Meta a direct testing ground for its most advanced Llama models, voice tech, and agentic capabilities that can browse, shop, and complete tasks autonomously.

It also supports Meta's long-term vision of personal superintelligence — an AI that knows the user, sees what they see through glasses and wearables, and acts on their behalf. Muse is increasingly the connective tissue between Meta AI, Advantage+ advertising tools, and its hardware ecosystem.

The Road to Profitability

Meta did not break out direct revenue from Muse, and the app remains free with no subscription tier yet. On the earnings call, finance chief Susan Li said monetization will follow engagement, with early experiments focused on product recommendations and business messaging.

Meta's total Q3 revenue beat Wall Street expectations on continued strength in ad pricing driven by AI improvements, giving the company room to keep investing heavily in data centers, chips, and Llama development despite rising capital expenditures.

Investors will be watching whether Muse can maintain its growth curve without heavy marketing spend and whether Meta can convert casual shoppers and productivity users into long-term daily active users.

Fierce Competition Ahead

The 10 million milestone puts a target on Muse's back. OpenAI's ChatGPT maintains a massive lead with hundreds of millions of weekly users and a growing shopping and agent push of its own. Google is embedding Gemini across Search, Android and Chrome, while Microsoft, Apple, Anthropic and Perplexity are all racing to own shopping and productivity workflows.

Meta's advantage lies in distribution and social context — over 3 billion daily users across its family of apps, plus unique signals from creators, Reels, and Marketplace that could make Muse's shopping recommendations more personalized than generic search.

Whether that is enough to close the gap remains the defining question for Q4 and into 2027. For now, Muse's breakout suggests Meta finally has a standalone AI app worth watching.

AndroGuider Team

Articles written by the AndroGuider team. We try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.